First Principles: Samair in Argos: Book 3

by KOTCHER, MICHAEL

  “Sir! Incoming shuttles on intercept course!” the sensor officer called out urgently.

  “What?” he quickly pulled up his display. Indeed, two cargo shuttles had been hiding behind the starfighters and had raced forward as the fighters had performed a pincer attack, which was probably little more than a distraction for some reason. But why…

  “Shift fire!” he ordered energetically, turning to face Paxton at tactical. “Shoot those shuttles down!” Gants’s bellow echoed over the bridge.

  Paxton stabbed frantically at his control, retasking his fire control and he shouted into his mic to the gun deck to get the turbolasers and heavy lasers to blast apart the incoming shuttles.

  His actions were too slow. The guns swung around and opened up, filling the space forward of the battlecruiser with coherent light, illuminating the hull and the two small ships that were coming in on a converging vector. But they weren’t able to track the two shuttles, were unable to lock on until they were less than five hundred meters from the ship. One of the shuttles was ten meters ahead of the other and they were spaced about two hundred and fifty meters apart, both moving in at a blistering speed of one hundred eighty. A heavy laser blast clipped the port side of one of the shuttles, putting it into a flat spin on its x-axis, which rapidly turned into an out of control spiral. Another shot pumped into the small ship, blowing it apart and detonating the bomb inside.

  The explosion hit the underside of the forward hull at a mere one hundred meters. Damage sparkled at the blast site, scoring the metal and ripping apart one heavy laser emplacement. It also blinded the gunnery sensors to the other shuttle which had made small adjustments to its course to keep the gunners working hard to catch it.

  The shuttles were being controlled by Stella, the AI of the Grania Estelle and with the enhanced comlink set up in the shuttle, she was able to maintain nearly real time communications over the ever-shrinking distance between the battlecruiser and the bulk freighter. Her sensors were blinded as well by the explosion but she didn’t need a perfect clear view. She knew exactly where the ship was, where the shuttle was, and how far it had to go before impact. Three seconds more and with two small adjustments to course, she crossed her mental digital fingers as the shuttle rocketed ahead, slamming into the underside of the Leytonstone, barely forty meters from the bow.

  The one hundred and fifty megaton blast crumpled the hull armor inward, then tore it open and the energy of the blast ignited the atmosphere inside, which blasted in, then erupted back out, reminiscent of a backdraft fire. Four of the heavy laser cannons were knocked out of action as the blast wave expanded and shredded them. Two turbolaser batteries were damaged and stopped firing.

  “Damn them!” Gants yelled, thumping his fist on the arm of his chair. “Damage report!” he bellowed.

  “Hull breach, sections four, five and six,” Hakami reported. “Engineering is attempting to seal them off. Two turbolaser batteries are out, four heavy cannons are out. Shields are down, forward ventral section. It looks as though two of the shield nodes are completely blown out. Unable to restore.”

  “Shit! Shit! Shit!” Gants swore emphatically. His eyes were wild, bloodshot. “Are we in range of those targets yet?”

  Paxton frowned. “The fighters, sir?”

  “No, stars damn it! The fucking station or that blasted freighter!” the colonel almost shrieked.

  The tactical officer blinked and then checked his display. “Y-yes, Colonel, we are with our turbolaser batteries. The bulk freighter is in range. Two minutes for the station.”

  “Well then lock on that freighter and give them a salvo,” he ordered, yelling over the noise of the thumping in his ears and the howling of damage alarms.

  “Captain!” Stella cried, her holographic fingers clawing at her holographic cheeks from her place above the projector on the forward part of the bridge. Eamonn whipped around at the intensity of her cry. The shuttle trap had worked perfectly, he had to admit. He’d been pissed that Ka’Xarian had been mixing up bombs on his ship without so much as speaking with his captain or even his Chief Engineer about it, but the purple bug had really come through, giving that battlecruiser a sharp uppercut her crew wouldn’t soon forget. In fact, the bridge crew on the bulk freighter had cheered at the explosion that hit the aggressor ship. But now Stella was clearly seeing something they weren’t

  “What is it?” he demanded, but the AI didn’t answer.

  Stella, despite appearances, wasn’t human. She wasn’t even organic. She was a digital construct that technically didn’t need a form, but sophonts found it easier to relate to an AI if it had form. Tamara, being human, programmed something that she found easy to relate to, in this case a teenage human female, almost a kid sister to help with the running of the Grania Estelle. But Stella, especially now with her recent upgrades, could operate hundreds of billions of calculations per second, could perceive and act on things in a fraction of a second before the organics around her could even realize that something was happening. In fact, in the time it had taken for her to cry out to Vincent Eamonn on the bridge, she was already working.

  The bulk freighter’s shields were currently operating at minimal power, only needed to keep radiation off the ship and away from the fragile meat bags inside. She flipped a number of digital switches, overriding normal operations and shunted all available power into the shield generators. The Grania Estelle was holding position about two kilometers from the Kutok mining station, perpendicular to the incoming Leytonstone, her starboard side facing the battlecruiser. The starboard shields hummed with power, supercharged to two hundred percent effectiveness. The incoming salvo from Leytonstone slammed into the shields, battering against the ship’s defenses, but with little effect. Stella gave a small sigh of relief.

  The problem was, as Tamara Samair had liked to say, Grania Estelle was a bulk freighter, not a battlecruiser. Most of her systems were civilian grade, which included her power systems and shield generator nodes. Yes, Stella’s quick thinking and even quicker action had saved them from a serious and possibly mortal pounding, but the severe strain she was putting on those systems would burn them out in a matter of minutes.

  A second salvo slammed against the reinforced shields, again to little effect. Luckily, the battlecruiser stopped firing for some unknown reason and not a moment too soon. The relays blew and the starboard side shield generator nodes all burned out, every one.

  “What the hell just happened?” Vincent Eamonn bellowed.

  Stella cringed. “I’m sorry, Captain. I had to act fast and there wasn’t time for a debate.”

  “What did you do?”

  Before she could answer a call from Engineering came through with an enraged Parkani on the other end of the line. “What in the name of the Twelve Hells are you bridge rats doing to my ship!” Quesh Trrgoth, the Grania Estelle’s Chief Engineer screamed over the comm. “You just blew out all of the starboard shields and nearly all of the power relays!”

  The AI winced. “I’m sorry, Chief. I needed to act quickly. The battlecruiser had opened fire on us and our regular strength shields wouldn’t have saved us. If I hadn’t acted, she would have cut us in half.”

  The four-armed engineer started swearing to himself and then cut the connection. Vincent turned to Stella, his anger having burned off. He sighed heavily. “You did the right thing, Stella. Do we have spares to replace all that equipment?”

  She tipped her head to the side. “We have some. We’ll have to replicate more.”

  Vincent chuckled wryly. “I can’t complain too loudly. You saved the ship. Please try not to do that unless absolutely necessary?”

  She nodded vigorously. “I won’t, Captain,” she promised. “But I knew my shields wouldn’t be able to stand up to the cruiser’s weapons at standard strength.”

  “And now they won’t stand up at all.” Standing, Vincent crossed to the empty helm station and sat down. Activating the console, he tapped a few controls and then gripped the flight cont
rol handles. With the slow ease of long ago practice coming back to him, he rolled the big freighter so that the undamaged side was now facing the attacker. “There, that’s better,” he said, bringing the roll to a stop and setting the controls for station keeping. “Won’t stand up to another salvo, but it’s making me feel a little better.”

  “Captain, I’m sorry, I just… There wasn’t time,” Stella said.

  “Enough, Stella,” Vincent said. “You did good. But the idea with bombs didn’t stop it and now we’re down two shuttles, to say nothing of the new damage. We can’t even jump to hyperspace now.”

  Stella just looked miserable, unable to say anything. Vincent sighed, leaning back in his chair. This day just kept getting worse.

  ~~~~~~~~~*~~~~~~~~~~

  “We hurt them, Colonel,” Paxton crowed from the tactical station.

  “But our shots didn’t even penetrate their shields,” Gants said, pointing to the display.

  “No, sir, they didn’t,” Hakami replied. “But they shunted all their power into the shields, which supercharged them. They stood up to two of our salvos, but then only a few seconds later all of the shields on that side of the ship collapsed.”

  “We shot through?”

  But Hakami shook her head. “No, Colonel. They failed. I think they pumped everything into the shields and the equipment couldn’t hold up under the strain. The fact that they just rolled ship to present us with the opposite side seems to confirm that, sir. I think all the shield nodes and power relays burned out. They’re not going anywhere anytime soon, sir. Without shields, they’re helpless and they’re stuck out here.”

  Gants nodded. “No jumping to hyperspace.”

  Hakami grinned. “No, sir. And if I’m right about the damage, it won’t be a quick fix, either. That’s probably two weeks worth of work.”

  “Good. I think it better that we’re not destroying civilian shipping, even if it is an FP ship.” Gants saw others on the bridge nodding their agreement. Not that he needed their approval for his actions, but it was good that he had it. Also, this was a warship, a ship meant to defend the system. He had no problems engaging the company warships, but shooting up freighters left a bad taste in his mouth, even if it had been his idea in the first place. He was glad that the bulk freighter had gotten off with only light damage. “What’s our distance from the mining station?”

  “Five hundred thousand kilometers, Colonel.”

  “And where’s that blasted corvette?”

  “They’re turning back to engage, sir,” Hakami reported, shaking her head in disbelief. “They’re bleeding air in their central spine area and have lost flanking shields, but they’re coming back? What the hell, Colonel?”

  Gants shook his own head. “I don’t get it either, Lieutenant Hakami. But if they want to die, I’m more than willing to accommodate them.”

  “Captain, I have to protest this action,” Chief al Fakhir stated again. He had returned to engineering and was in the process of rerouting power to the shields, the fore and aft ones anyway. The port and starboard shields covering the spine were completely down, the nodes damaged. That would be a big job to fix. “Even if your special weapon works the way you hope, it won’t destroy that ship. I’m not even sure it will disable it.”

  “Thank you, Mister al Fakhir,” Tamara said shortly. She plopped herself back into her command seat on the bridge. “I understand that this is a dangerous maneuver and I know how badly we’ve been hit. But they’ve already fired on us, and they’ve fired on one of the civilian freighters. I can’t let that stand. This is an illegal and unprovoked attack. We have to respond. I just wish that we had more ships.” She silently cursed her decision to hold off on building the second corvette. The manpower issue hadn’t changed, they didn’t have the people to crew that ship, but having a second ship to stand against the Leytonstone might have given them pause. Who am I kidding? Two corvettes and slightly more than one squadron of starfighters against the battlecruiser? So far we’re doing far better than anyone has any right to expect. And al Fakhir’s right. This is really not a smart move. It’ll be a miracle if this ship gets through this last maneuver and is still functional. “Are the shields ready?”

  There was a moment’s pause. “Thirty seconds, Captain. Just make sure that when you take us toward this folly that you’re gentle on the throttle. The structural integrity isn’t great,” the engineer replied before cutting the connection.

  Tamara checked her display one last time. “All right, Mister Wymea. Put us on course for the battlecruiser, her aft section as best you can. And you know the drill. Evasive entry, don’t make it easy for them.”

  “On straight course for the attack, aye Captain,” the man replied, pushing up the throttles.

  Right on cue, Ykzann reported that the shields were holding at two hundred percent. The man was as good as his word, despite his protests. The ship accelerated, slowly, much slower than Tamara would have liked, but she knew that with all her damage, Cavalier could no longer perform the eye-popping maneuvers her class was good at. It would be a good long while with repair teams crawling over her to get the structural damage repaired.

  But that was something to worry about after this battle was ended. Tamara mentally crossed her fingers, but kept her face rock steady. It wouldn’t do to have her bridge crew see her sweat. The crew understood. It had stopped being about balance sheets and making another megacredit for FP once armed mercenaries had boarded the Kutok mining station. It was hammered home once the Leytonstone had come out here and attacked.

  The ship accelerated smoothly, and Wymea did his best to evade the incoming fire from the Leytonstone. It had slackened a bit what with the damage to the battlecruiser’s fore and aft sections, and the damage to the ship’s weapons, but even one turbolaser battery was enough to smash the already damaged corvette. The corvette opened up with her heavy lasers, sending what amounted to a pinprick of fire back at the battlecruiser, which was showering the Cavalier in coherent light.

  “I’m showing severe spotting on the battlecruiser’s shields, Captain,” Ykzann reported. “But only two fighters are left attacking her.”

  Tamara gritted her teeth. “Very well. Continue on course.” She checked her feeds. Another few seconds before she could launch with any chance of getting a hit without the modified missile being shot down. They only had one shot, so they were going to have to get into point blank range. They were closing, and it seemed that Mister Wymea had been touched by some invisible magical angel which was guiding his hands. He seemed to have a sense to know exactly which way to turn, when exactly to apply thrusters to change vectors to evade the incoming fire.

  But then it seemed the angel must have blinked. A trio of hits hammered the Cavalier’s forward screens. Then two more. And then another three. The corvette seemed to falter in its dogged approach to the much larger behemoth. Tamara found herself holding her breath, until finally…

  “Now, Guns!” she ordered.

  The Severite pressed the control and the Cavalier’s only functioning missile tube spat out its weapon. She could feel everyone on the bridge, save for Wymea, who was too busy to allow himself the distraction, holding their breath in anticipation. Garidhak continued to lay down fire with the forward heavy lasers, pounding on the hull of the battlecruiser through holes in the shields. Her shots were only doing minor damage to the hull, despite the constant pressure. A few salvos of firing at her hull armor punched through in a few places, but the damage she was inflicting was very little; a terrier attacking an elephant.

  Tamara had her controls ready and she pressed the button that would activate the grav plate. It was on a proximity fuse, which would activate only a bare fraction of a second before impact. It closed on the Leytonstone’s hull, and Tamara noted that the missile had missed its target lock, it would hit ten meters from the still-active propulsion unit, which was less than ideal but there was nothing she could do to alter its course now. The weapon slipped past all of the battl
ecruiser’s fire and plowed into the ship’s unshielded and damaged stern.

  Tamara’s modified weapon was essentially a complicated kinetic energy weapon. It didn’t have an explosive warhead like the “throat ripper” missiles did, since she’d stripped it out. It was meant to slam into the target and deliver a solid punch. The addition of the grav plate was something she’d seen in Republic missiles from her time in the Navy. At the barest fraction of a second before impact, the grav plate spun up, temporarily increasing the mass of the weapon by a factor of almost 10,000. So a one-ton projectile became a 10,000-ton projectile, moving at the same speed. The grav plate didn’t have the power to last very long, but then it didn’t have to.

  The weapon crashed into the aft section of the hull like a titanic fist. It missed the functioning propulsion unit, but it crushed the hull where it hit causing it both to crumple inward and at the same time fracture outwards. Internal explosions rocked the ship and caused the damaged parts to glow with what could best be described as an infernal light. The entire after third of the battlecruiser suddenly went dark, the engine went offline and the shields collapsed. In an instant, she was adrift, her guns silent.

  “Yes!” Garidhak screamed. “Heavy damage to the after section, ma’am! She’s helpless!” The rest of the bridge cheered.

  “Open a channel to the Leytonstone,” Tamara ordered, her voice loud over the din. “Order their surrender.”

  “Sending now!” the comms watch replied happily.

  “Damage report!” Gants demanded. Half the displays on the bridge were showing static, including his own. Only the operations console and the engineering station were live.